DAVID J. ZUCKER, Ph.D. recently retired as rabbi/chaplain at Shalom Cares, a senior continuum of care center, as well as Shalom Hospice in Aurora, Colorado. He is the author of The Torah: An Introduction for Christians and Jews (Paulist, 2005). His latest books will be published this year: The Bible’s PROPHETS: An Introduction for Christians and Jews, as well as The Bible’s WRITINGS: An Introduction for Christians and Jews (Wipf and Stock, 2013). He publishes in a variety of areas. See his Web site, www.DavidJZucker.org.

Only two books in the entire corpus of
the Bible feature the names of women in their titles: Esther and Ruth. Although
very different books, with quite different heroines, each is read as the
megillah reading for a major Jewish holy day: Esther for the festival of Purim
and Ruth for the festival of Shavuot.

Some years ago (2001), the Jewish
Publication Society published an excellent commentary on Esther [which is
included in the journal’s Vol. 9:1], and a decade later (2011) there follows an equally fine
commentary on Ruth.

Tamara Cohn Eskenazi – Professor of Bible
at HUC-JIR LA, joined with Tikva Frymer-Kensky Professor of Hebrew Bible and
the History of Judaism in the University of Chicago's Divinity School. Their
collaboration is an eminently readable, thoroughly researched study of the book
of Ruth. Understandably, it earned the 2011 National Jewish Book Award.

While this commentary on Ruth was a joint
effort of these two well-respected scholars, regrettably Professor
Frymer-Kensky died in 2006 in the midst of working on the project. Fortunately,
she left extensive notes, which addressed the first two chapters, as well as
some notes concerning the Introduction. Professor Eskenazi’s voice is reflected
in chapters three and four, as well as being the principal voice of the
Introduction.

Even more than the book of Esther, in the
figures of Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi, the book of Ruth features women as
central characters. Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky explain that this has led
several “scholars [to] entertain the possibility that the author was a woman.
They note the unusual extent to which the book is attentive to women’s lives
and perspectives (comparable only to Song of Songs in this respect)” (p. xvi).
Another view suggested is that Ruth was written by “a circle of women” (p.
xvii).

JPS Commentary – Ruth divides into two main sections, of
approximate equal length, a fascinating Introduction, and then the text of the
book itself, both in Hebrew and English, along with a running commentary at the
bottom of the page. This commentary which addresses each and every verse in the
book provides a forum for the authors to address a variety of subjects:these might be the plain meaning of the
text, or it could be placing some matter in historical or cultural context, or
they might refer to varied rabbinic commentaries on a particular word or verse.
On other occasions, the running commentary refers to material, which will
appear later in the story, or in other parts of the Bible. There are analyses
of the names of all the major characters and places, as well as descriptions of
institutions, such as levirate marriage.

Each of the four chapters commences with
a paragraph overview followed by a simple three single sentence outline
accompanied with appropriate verse numbers. These divisions help the reader to
understand the direction of the chapter itself. In addition, as one reads the
commentary each of these chapter divisions features additional introductory
explanations for the section it addresses.

Over the
past decades, the book of Ruth has been analyzed from a variety of
perspectives. It is of particular interest in terms of women’s' studies, for
example Judith A. Kates and Gail Twersky Reimer, eds., Reading Ruth:
Contemporary Women Reclaim a Sacred Story (1994), and there have been
some fine general commentaries written about Ruth by Edward F. Campbell (1975), Robert L.
Hubbard, Jr. (1988), Jack M. Sasson (1989), Frederick W. Bush (1996), Kirsten Nielsen
(1997), and Tod Linafelt (1999). What makes this work special is that it is a full-length treatment of the book of Ruth written by
two women who could provide a feminine perspective, something that among the
works cited immediately above, only the Nielsen book had achieved. The added
plus is that these were Jewish women scholars.

The near ninety page Introduction provides
the reader with a wealth of information. For example, although many scholars
and commentators in the past suggested that the Boaz-Ruth marriage was a
levirate union that does not appear to be the case. Such a view “is nowadays
challenged by a number of scholars” (p. xxxv). The Introduction itself divides
into seventeen sections: Authorship and Date; Genre/Style; Ruth’s Place in the
Canon; Ruth’s Relationship to Other Biblical Books; Ruth and Shavuot;
Background Issues and Themes; Levirate Marriage; The Marriage of Boaz and Ruth;
Intermarriage; Conversion; The Status of the Moabites; Hesed; The Theology of the Book of Ruth;
Redemption in the Bible; Pre-Modern Rabbinic Interpretations; Later Jewish
Interpretations; and Contemporary Readings. In this last category are
subsections on Feminist Interpretations and Modern Jewish Interpretations
(although clearly some of these could overlap each other).

The JPS Bible Commentary – Ruth is a product of the contemporary world
and gives voice to contemporary concerns. Notable in this volume are sections
on Intermarriage and Conversion, as well as Feminist Interpretations.

At times, the language is consciously
playful. The authors describe the book of Ruth as a “story [that] is simple but
never simplistic” (p. xvi), a work that is filled with “hesed and
hutzpah” telling the
story of “a journey from famine to fullness, from futility to fertility” (p.
xv).

All material in the
journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where
otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents
by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the
views of the editors.